They called him Cuban Pete, or at least they did in that ‘50s Babalu number. Desi should be with us at this moment, as it appears that any mañana now might bring a long-delayed breakthrough in Cuban-American relations.
I always enjoyed Desi Arnaz’s many old TV appearances. And you know it couldn’t have been easy to live and work with Lucy, at least not if you credit posthumous tabloid accounts of her marriage and business partnership with Desi. You’d think that at least she’d have some gratitude for his having saved her professional culo from the Hollywood blacklist when the matter of her 1930’s Communist Party voter registration arose, but, sadly, no.
Turning our attention to today’s news about Cuba, we find:
U.S. State Department officials met in Havana with Cuban apparatchiks —including the grandson of aging strongman Raul Castro— to urge democratic and economic freedoms and warn of the risks of not heeding their advice, Axios has learned.
By the way, I like that term “apparatchiks” a lot. So redolent of the Cold War! Good for you, Axios writer (since I don’t think a bot could be that historically informed and literary).
It seems Raul’s nieto is carrying messages formatted as dip notes to Cuban-American businessmen. So, maybe he’s a nepo-commie ready to step forward and take a leadership position in the new era of cooperation with the U.S. If so, good luck with that.
Although, I don’t think Trump can really respect someone whose nickname is "the Crab". Are we supposed to be afraid of a crab? I guess you wouldn’t want to step on one if you were barefoot, but still, that’s not a name that will impress power players.
Negotiations go two ways, of course, so you may wonder what it is that the gringoes want from their interlocutors? According to CBS News, “senior State Department representatives” who visited Cuba last week pushed for political and economic reforms (that are as yet not publicly specified), sweetened by an offer of instant internet access via Elon Musk’s Starlink.
Of course, there was also a stick to go along with that carrot: whoever is in charge in Cuba has very little time to act, and Trump will not let a collapsing state create a security threat to the U.S.
During the meetings, the U.S. delegation discussed the Trump administration’s push for political and economic reforms, as well as the U.S.’s demands for the release of political prisoners, the State Department official said. The Americans also floated offering Cuba access to Starlink, a satellite internet service operated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
“The delegation reiterated that the Cuban economy is in free fall and that the island’s ruling elites have a small window to make key U.S. backed reforms before circumstances irreversibly worsen,” the official told CBS News.
Some news reports have claimed that the U.S. side is also demanding compensation for American-owned properties that were seized when Castro took over. That would be fair, and just possibly it would also force Cuba to deal with the Five Families of organized crime, who famously owned hotels and casinos in Havana.
Should demoralized communists clash with the aged remnants of La Cosa Nostra, it’ll be anybody’s guess which side will end up sleeping with the fishes.
For a little perspective on all this we can look at how the Donroe Doctrine is now being applied to Venezuela, because it is in ways which foreshadow what Cuba can expect, especially as it concerns the large number of foreign comrades that Cuba still hosts.
In a significant geopolitical and energy-sector shift, the United States has directed the removal of Chinese contractors from maintenance and rehabilitation work at Venezuela’s El Guri Hydroelectric Dam—the third-largest in the world after China’s Three Gorges and the Itaipu Dam on the Brazil-Paraguay border. American engineering giants Siemens and General Electric (GE) have now been contracted to evaluate and rehabilitate the dam and Venezuela’s entire national electrical grid (Sistema Eléctrico Nacional, or SEN).
This development, reported widely on Venezuelan social media and confirmed through multiple independent accounts in the past 48 hours, follows U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright’s high-level visit to Caracas in February 2026 and the issuance of OFAC General License 48A (GL 48A). The license explicitly authorizes U.S. persons and companies to provide goods, technology, software, and services for the generation, transmission, storage, or distribution of electricity in Venezuela—opening the door for American private-sector involvement in the country’s chronically unstable power system.
Neo-colonialism is back, my fellow Estadounidense, only this time without the messy preliminaries, such as military occupation, but just going directly to the mature stage of unequal trade agreements and economic dependency. Teddy Roosevelt could only dream of doing it this efficiently.
Right now all the shooting is going on in Iran and its surroundings, and naturally that monopolizes the attention of the news media and the Washington commentariate.
But my guess is that the less kinetic kind of diplomatic energy that’s being expended on our long neglected neighbors to the south will have as much or more impact on our national wellbeing in the long run.
In 2024, President Donald Trump handily beat Vice President Kamala Harris with Catholic voters by a 12-point margin.
Almost a year-and-a-half into Trump’s second term, he began attacking Pope Leo XIV, personally and aggressively. Then he shared an image depicting himself as Jesus Christ, days after his defense secretary called for war in the name of Jesus Christ.
Between Trump’s second inauguration in January 2025 and today, tensions have steadily grown between the president and the Catholic strain of his coalition. This relationship started ripping apart during Israel’s brutal war against Gaza and is now shattering during the U.S.-Israel war on Iran. According to numbers in this new poll, Trump's Catholic support is going in the wrong direction.
Ahead of this year’s midterms, Republicans cannot afford to lose the Catholic constituency, which is considered one of the most important swing votes in American politics today.
Meanwhile, the Vatican has come out forcefully against the U.S. and Israel’s wars, setting up a war of words between the administration and their Evangelical supporters on one side and American Catholics and the church on the other.
The Vatican has long opposed Israel’s war in Gaza. Aside from raising alarms over the humanitarian devastation, the church, dating back to Pope Francis, has sought protection of ancient Christian communities in Israel and Palestine. In July of 2025, the Holy Family Church, the only Catholic church in Gaza, was hit by Israeli fire, killing three. The Israelis said it was an accident.
The criticism has carried over to the U.S.-Israel bombing of Iran, which began on Feb. 28. Now the Vatican’s criticisms include the administration’s constant framing of Operation Epic Fury as a holy war blessed by God.
Two weeks before Easter, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth spoke at the Pentagon about the U.S. military using “overwhelming force” and lauded its special ability to rain “death and destruction from above” on America’s Iranian enemies. Hegseth urged Americans to pray for military victory “in the name of Jesus Christ,” and to do so “every day, on bended knee, with your family, in your schools, in your churches.”
On Holy Thursday, Pope Leo appeared to respond directly, saying such a Christian view was “distorted by a desire for domination, entirely foreign to the way of Jesus Christ.” On April 10th, Pope Leo would add, “God does not bless any conflict. Anyone who is a disciple of Christ, the Prince of Peace, is never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs.”
This obviously rankled Trump, who — after his own invocation of God amid threats to “reign hell” on the Iranians on Easter Sunday, one of Catholicism’s most holy days — struck out at the pope, saying he is “weak on crime,” knows nothing about foreign policy, and caters to “the radical left.” Trump then suggested he was the reason why the Chicago-born Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost was elected to the papacy in 2025 after Pope Francis’ death earlier last year.
“He wasn’t on any list to be Pope, and was only put there by the Church because he was an American, and they thought that would be the best way to deal with President Donald J. Trump,” the president wrote. “If I wasn’t in the White House, Leo wouldn’t be in the Vatican.”
Trump then shared an AI-generated image that appeared to depict himself as Jesus Christ — a resemblance he denied shortly before taking down the image amid social media outrage.
The Ancient Order of Hibernians, the U.S.’s largest organization of Irish Catholics, reacted in a statement: “When a president mocks the Vicar of Christ and then cloaks himself in Christ’s image, he has left the realm of politics entirely.”
“He has committed an act of desecration against a faith held sacred by over a billion souls,” it added. There are approximately 1.4 billion Catholics in the world, and 75 million in the United States.
It’s as if Trump is deliberately torpedoing his Catholic base, and over what? Critics say war and his blank check to Israel — which wants so desperately to keep the U.S. in the position of funding and fighting — are at the root of the problem. As defenders of both, American Evangelical Christians have been mixing it up with Catholic voices on the right for months, at one point suggesting that Catholics in Gaza did not deserve sympathy.
Over the summer, the Evangelical Christian editor of the Babylon Bee Joel Berry stirred the pot after Israeli shelling hit the Church of the Holy Family (it had been sheltering Palestinian Christians during the civilian slaughter). “This won’t be easy for people to hear, but there are only about 200 professed Catholics still living in Gaza and they all support Hamas,” he posted on X.
“True Christian faith still exists in Gaza, but it’s all underground. Anyone allowed by Hamas to practice openly is allowed to do so only because they aid and support the terror regime,” Berry added.
This drew a swift backlash.“I don’t know about anyone else, but as a Catholic who supports and prays for my persecuted Christian brothers and sisters in Gaza and the Holy Land, I won’t be sharing or boosting anything produced by the Babylon Bee or its anti-Catholic, dispensationalist editors ever again,” wrote author and Federalist senior editor John Daniel Davidson.
Last summer saw a number of Catholics on the right start questioning further support of the war in Gaza.
Military contractor (and Catholic) Erik Prince, no pacifist, accused Israel in August 2025 of taking “pot shots” at the cross on the top of the Holy Family Church. He said the U.S. should stop supporting Israel. Hamas “need to die,” he continued, but "the real losers are the normal people in Gaza just trying to live.” He has also criticized the current war in Iran.
Things got worse last week when Vice President JD Vance, who is a Catholic convert (he has a new book coming out in June about it), suggested the pope should stay in his lane. “In the same way that it’s important for the vice president of the United States to be careful when I talk about matters of public policy, I think it’s very, very important for the pope to be careful when he talks about matters of theology,” the vice president said at a conservative Turning Point USA event.
This prompted the chairman of the U.S. Catholic bishops committee, Bishop James Massa, to issue a statement clarifying Pope Leo’s role and duties, “For over a thousand years, the Catholic Church has taught just war theory and it is that long tradition the Holy Father carefully references in his comments on war.”
UnHerd Editor Sohrab Ahmari, who had called for a Catholic boycott of the Babylon Bee last summer, has been a supporter of fellow convert Vance, but is frustrated with a strain of conservative Catholics who appear to be ignoring the faith’s teachings on Just War and the sanctity of life when it comes to Israel’s conduct, primarily the widespread killing of civilians, and U.S. material and political support for it.
“There is a Catholic church that reminds us that it’s a citadel of civilization, of rationality, this institution that so many people think is pre-modern … actually is unbending when it comes to basic questions of morality,” Ahmari told Politico. “Lashing out in revenge … for 47 years of Iranian acts that we disapprove of and should and can disapprove of is not reason to then bomb the country.”
If the Trump administration is seemingly turning off Catholic Americans, the last bastion of Trump's strident Christian U.S. support for its pro-war, pro-Israel agenda appears to be Evangelicals.
This is something Israeli leaders seem to comprehend, particularly given the Zionist theology of so many American Evangelical Christians (including Ambassador Mike Huckabee and Hegseth himself). In a now infamous interview, Huckabee told Tucker Carlson that essentially, Israel has a biblical right to take Middle East lands.
In December, more than 1,000 American Christian pastors and influencers traveled to Israel, all paid for by that country’s government, “to provide training and prepare participants to serve as unofficial ambassadors for Israel in their communities.”
Meanwhile, Pope Leo says he is not afraid of the Trump Administration, but the president might want to start worrying about Catholic voters ahead of the midterms.
A poll conducted at the end of March, before Trump’s attacks on the pope were in full swing, showed that the president’s approval among Catholic voters had already dropped to 48%, with 52% disapproving.
Religion has been invoked in many wars across history, with uneasy relations between secular and religious leaders throughout. But the Trump administration is going to find out the hard way that Americans are uneasy with this feud.
“Republicans who might have hoped this would be a one- or two-day story — and that they could put the pope in his place and move on — appear unlikely to get their wish,” noted CNN analyst Aaron Blake. “(It) might be time to come up with a new talking point.”
The focal point of the beautiful Branitz Park near Cottbus consists of two pyramids: the Land Pyramid, modeled after the stepped shape of the Pyramids of Saqqara, and the Lake Pyramid or "Tumulus"—the burial pyramid. In front of the latter lies a tiny island featuring the gravestone of Prince Hermann von Pückler-Muskau and his wife, Lucie.
Hermann von Pückler-Muskau commands respect as one of the most multifaceted and dazzling personalities of his era. He was also quite an "odd bird." Born on October 30, 1785, as the eldest son of a mother who was only 15 years old, he grew up with his grandfather. After his grandfather's death, the education of the nine-year-old was entrusted to the Moravian Church (Herrnhuter Brüdergemeinde). The pietism of this "Moravian hypocrisy-institute" (as Pückler called it) triggered early religious skepticism, rebellion, liberalism and a commitment to pantheism—the equation of God with nature.
After dropping out of law school, he began a military career in 1802. From 1806 onwards, he undertook extensive travels to Provence and Italy. During the Wars of Liberation starting in 1813, he enjoyed a rapid military rise, briefly serving as the military governor of Bruges. After leaving military service, he traveled to England, where he found his calling as a landscape gardener. He began creating an "ideal park" in the Neisse floodplains in Muskau, which is today a cross-border UNESCO World Heritage site shared by Germany and Poland.
Biographical details of his life paint the picture of a restless adventurer and multi-talent. He went on a hot-air balloon flight, married the divorced Lucie von Hardenberg (who was nine years his senior), and later divorced her at her own suggestion—though not before transferring assets to her to protect them from seizure.In Lucie, he found his lifelong intellectual counterpart; both shared a 'parkomania'—a fanatical passion for landscape gardening.
The underlying purpose of the divorce was to acquire a dowry through a new marriage in England, as an extravagant lifestyle and the landscaping of Muskau Park had left him and Lucie in financial distress. However, the English nobility locked away their daughters—Pückler's charm and charisma were well known—and so the lucrative marriage never materialized. Recognizing the literary potential of Pückler's humorous letters to her, Lucie published them to great success. In an age before the "yellow press" existed to hawk high-society gossip, Pückler provided an insider’s look at the lives of the rich and noble, reporting with wit and irony. Furthermore, he criticized the displacement of the Irish rural population by the English nobility. Politically, he held liberal and left-leaning positions, advocating for the abolition of slavery, freedom of the press, and the separation of church and state.
After missing his departure to North America due to a duel, he traveled to Egypt and up the Nile to Sudan in 1837. In a slave market in Khartoum, he bought the freedom of four slaves and made the underage Ethiopian girl Machbuba (Arabic for "beloved") his foster child, but also his mistress. Travels to Turkey and Greece followed. In 1845, having overextended himself financially, he sold his estates in Muskau and began designing Branitz Park near Cottbus. Lucie von Hardenberg continued to take the lead in implementing his plans. Even in old age, he pushed his military career, rising to Lieutenant General in 1863. In 1866, at the age of 80, he famously overslept the Battle of Königgrätz; he was nevertheless honored after the victory. However, his participation in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71 was denied, even though he had volunteered at the age of 86.
Princess Lucie remained devoted to him until the end of her life, overseeing the garden designs during his escapades. Inspired by his travels to the Orient, he designed his own grave in the form of the Tumulus. His instructions regarding his mortal remains testify to his skepticism toward religion and his free-spirited nature: since cremation was not permitted by the church, he decreed that his heart be dissolved in sulfuric acid and his body be bedded in quicklime.
The only thing he did not come up with himself was the "Fürst-Pückler-Eis" (Neapolitan ice cream)—the combination of vanilla, strawberry, and chocolate popular in Germany. It was a clever marketing idea by the confectioner Schulz from Cottbus (or Berlin), who likely served it to the Prince only once so that some of the nobleman's fame might rub off on him.
james baldwin was so right when he said you think you’re alone and then you pick up a book and realise someone else has felt the same way as you and managed to find a language for it. the realest shit
Last month we talked about times when you said the exact wrong thing at work, and here are 20 (!) of my favorite stories you shared. There are also many not included below but which you’ll be seeing in Mortification Week later this year.
1. The insult
I once worked as an editor and I told an author that if they tried a certain method to make a certain change to their paper, it “might be worth a shit.” Shot. I meant shot. And I did not catch it before hitting send.
2. The inexplicable sneer
I had a phone screening for a job many years ago. There was a particular way of doing a standard task that I used more as a freelancer than in my current job because my boss at my job thought that method was inferior to another way. So of course they asked about it, and — even though I actually disagreed with my boss! — what came out of my mouth was, “Well, we don’t do that at Current Company” in the most contemptuous tone possible. It was like I’d suddenly channeled my boss.
I tried to immediately correct by saying I used the skill in freelance work and I disagreed with Current Job’s position but you will not be surprised to hear I did not get any further in that hiring process.
3. The memory
I told a room full of people living with dementia that I had “the world’s worst memory.” Do I? Do I really?
4. The criticism
I’m a marketing copywriter. At a job several years ago, the creative director was showing me a print mail flyer that she wanted to work with me on updating. As she was going over the changes she wanted to make to the design, I nodded in agreement and said, “Oh that sounds amazing! And good thing, this current design is awful. Who designed this?” She waited a beat before saying, “I did.” I wanted to crawl into a hole and die.
5. The poster
A coworker made a poster describing the work her church’s mission group did overseas, which included some health care/education outreach activities not routinely available for women in remote areas of that country. Under the accomplishments section, the poster read: “WE TOUCHED 75 WOMEN IN THEIR HOMES!”
That was over 10 years ago and I still use that phrase as a writing example where meaning has completely changed without key details.
6. The compliment
My boss had a meeting with local donors and the CEO happened to be present as well. In an effort to try and give a compliment about the size of the company’s current endowment, my boss instead said to the donor, “Have you met my CEO? He’s very well-endowed.”
7. The right hand
I was once being interviewed for a job by a man with one arm. I assured him before I left his office that he could count on me to be his right hand.
8. The brains
One Halloween, I dressed like a zombie at work. My boss let me know that he was heading out to lunch so I responded with, “Get some brains while you’re out!” After I said it I was like oh well … I’m a zombie, never mind, but luckily he had a sense of humor.
9. The bad example
I used to use the phrase “in case you get hit by a bus” as an example of why documented procedures were important. Not long after I started my current job, one of my colleagues kindly let me know that a very beloved member of another team had actually been hit by a bus, so I might want to use different wording.
10. The children’s librarian
Children’s librarian: I have put my foot in my mouth many a time during storytime. Once I implied that we should appreciate how cute the kids were because we weren’t sure if they would be here next year — then tried to overexplain while parents stared at me with jaws agape. Another time I complimented the kids on their blowing skills. My dad was in the audience with my niece that day as a bonus. We were pretending to blow out candles. It might not have raised any eyebrows if I hadn’t turned bright red and started laughing maniacally. I’m usually very good at storytime.
11. The interview
I work in HR and when this happened I was applying for an HR manager role and had over 10 years of experience. I was meeting with several people one after the other and when one asked me to come to her side of the desk so she could share information on her computer, I said, “Sure, you’re already harassing me so why not?” Why and how this came out of my mouth was a mystery then and still is 10 years later.
12. The microbiologist
Oh man, I work in Microbiology.
“I think I have gonorrhea.”
Or any other number of things.
Usually followed by, “I don’t have gonorrhea, I have gonorrhea.”
13. The client service
I was following up with a client who hadn’t responded when I realized I ended my email with, “If you have any questions, don’t call me!”
14. The question
I’m in OB-GYN. Many years ago I had a patient who was here for an abortion. I noticed she was holding some stuff in her hands, as we talked, and she seemed to be annoyed to be dealing with it. I encouraged her to set the things down on the desk.
“Thanks,” she said. “I don’t know why but my husband wanted me to hold his wallet for him.”
“Can’t he keep it in his pants?” I asked the patient. Who was there for a pregnancy she didn’t want.
We both recognized what I’d said at the same time. Fortunately she thought it was hilarious. I hope I brought some light to her on a rough day.
15. The poor choice
I walked to our print room and saw two of the accountants pulling apart a printer to find a jam. I laughed and said, “What, is the printer guy dead?”
Yes. Yes he was.
16. The battle against the aged
I used to do charity collecting with friends at university, for a different charity each week. So, one week the patter was, “Could you spare any change to help fight cancer?” and the next was, “Could you spare any change for [UK charity] Help the Aged?”
Looked over during the second week’s session to see some passersby in absolute hysterics because my friend had asked them for change “to help fight the aged.”
17. The pic
At my previous job, I was in charge of onboarding all new hires. We used the DISC (I know, I know) and hung up each person’s profile with a picture of them near their desk. Usually, I would say, “Can you please send me your DISC pic?” but once, to a male new hire, I said, “Can you please send me your dick pic?” I quickly corrected myself, turned eight shades of red, and then chose to rephrase my statement moving forward. I still cringe when I think about it.
18. The swinging grannies
I work in the performing arts, and at one interview for an adult education role I expressed my desire to extend community aerial circus workshops to older people by declaring, “I want to get grannies swinging!’’ Cue irrecoverable giggles from the panel.
19. The fashion
There was this person in my office who always had the BEST outfits — super well-fitting, super put-together yet fun, made animal prints (something that’s not always my thing) look super cool … Aaand for whatever reason, anytime I wanted to complement her, my brain decided to tell her how “fun” her outfits looked. Which, like, you can get away with once or twice, but I said this so often she must have thought I was determined to passive-aggressively insult her fashion sense.
We also worked on different teams, so this was probably 70% of my interactions with this person. I genuinely thought she was very cool and wanted to be work friends, but I guess my brain was intent on sabotoging me.
20. The father
About 20 years ago, I worked in a group of mostly under 25-year-olds in a call center. We were a high-spirited bunch new-ish to the working world and not particularly serious. There was a lunchroom with a big TV where we would eat in shifts, chit chat and watch junk TV programs, including one where the host would announce “You ARE” or You ARE NOT” the father after a mother’s paternity test.
One time at a meeting right after lunch, our boss announced she would be taking time off because she was pregnant. Out of my mouth flew these words: “Congratulations! Do you know who the father is?”
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